United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)

Source:

NCHS

Access Restrictions:

No

Abstract:

The divorce detail files include all divorces occurring in states that meet reporting criteria for inclusion in the divorce-registration area. Divorces occurring outside the divorce-registration area are not included.
Data are obtained from certificates of divorce occurring in each registration state. Records of each state in the divorce-registration area were sampled at one of five sampling rates used in processing 1968-95 data. Data are weighted, based on the sampling fraction of the reporting state.
The files include one record for each divorce in the sample. Divorce certificate numbers are not on the tapes. NCHS does not distribute certificates, files, or indexes with identifying information for divorces.
Items included on the files are data year, age at decree and at marriage, age at separation, petitioner, education, month of divorce, number of children under 18 years, number of this marriage, number of previous marriages ended by death/divorce, race, state of marriage, state of divorce, state of residence, total number of living children, custody of children, and record weight. Most of these items are included across the 1970-1988 interval. Years before and after that have less information. The collection of marriage/divorce detail information was suspended in January 1996.

Universe:

Divorce data are classified by state of occurrence. The divorce-registration area included 26 state in 1968, 28 states in 1969-1970, 29 states in 1971-1977, 28 states in 1978, 30 states in 1979-1980, 31 states in 1981-1985, and 31 states and the District of Columbia in 1986-1990. Data are not classified for counties or cities.